Mobilising a Global Community with Local Expertise

“We are bringing the local expertise from our National Communities into our global team”

By James Sancto, Co-Founder & CEO, We Make Change

To make a global impact it takes local knowledge. Because every challenge the world faces is caused by a series of local challenges in countries across the world. Those best placed to address them are those nearest to them. Because they understand the root causes of the challenges best and how best to solve them.

At We Make Change we’ve always prided ourselves on finding the most effective solutions to the challenges the world faces today and then supporting their growth by connecting them with high-skilled online volunteers. Over the last 12 months alone, we’ve supported more than 200 Social Enterprises to grow their impact through our community of more than 25,000 ChangeMakers across the world.

National Communities

As part of our belief in the need to make the local global, we launched National Communities. These communities were a place for people to connect with ChangeMakers in their countries and to mobilise together to support local Social Enterprises. In the last two years since launching, these communities have done amazing things.

During the height of the pandemic, local teams from India to Indonesia, the UK to the USA helped people find opportunities to volunteer and donate to support those most in need. They’ve held webinars and events to inform people about the challenges their country faces and inspire them that they can be part of the solution. They’ve found Social Enterprises, written blogs, and even launched podcasts to empower people to make the change they want to see.

Yet, as a resource-limited organisation, we’ve always found it hard to enable the Executive Teams leading these communities to reach their potential in making the change they want to see. While at the global level, we’ve managed to mobilise thousands of people to volunteer. To ensure we focus our resources on how we can make change most effectively, we have taken the tough decision to close our National Communities.

Bringing local knowledge into a global team

Because if we exist to enable anyone, anywhere to use their skills to support the causes they care about, we must do what is most effective to make that happen. That is why we are bringing the local expertise from our National Communities into our global team. We are bringing in researchers from our communities to find, map and reach out to Social Enterprises from their regions, as well as to research the challenges their countries face. This way, we can harness the power of our global platform to mobilise volunteers, while harnessing local expertise to find the most effective solutions to the challenges faced in different countries across the world.

It’s never easy running a startup - particularly when you’re trying to make change in a way that has never been done before. But it’s only by experimenting that you can find what works. That’s why I want to say a huge thank you to everyone who has been involved in National Communities in some way. Your effort has not been wasted. Far from it, you’ve achieved so much and enabled us to learn even more, so that together we can be even more effective in making the change we want to see.

Onto the next chapter of giving you the power to change the world. It’s going to be more exciting than ever!

GET INVOLVED

If you would like to use your skills to volunteer, you can join a project here.
If you are running or starting up a Social Enterprise or NGO dedicated to making a change, you can find the skilled volunteers you need to grow your impact for free here.
Contact us to find out how your employees can make a difference and create a lasting change in your organisation here.